Sir, - €5,000 a year and possibly more in tuition fees? Plus some €7,000 annual living expenses, not to mention the rise in the registration fee? The Minister of Education appears seriously to suggest that the average family find about €13,000 annually to put a son or daughter through third-level education.
Maybe he can appraise us of the arithmetical magic he seems to perform in this context. May I remind him that the average annual industrial wage is €23,000? Would he also care to remember that this is not a one-child-per-family country and that it is not unreasonable to assume that the average Irish family would like to give all of their children the economic survival chance afforded by third-level education?
Or should we indeed vote No in the Nice referendum and thus try to keep out the low-wage countries of Eastern Europe? We could then advertise our own newly under-educated, low-cost workforce, the inevitable result of this utterly irresponsible and unethical proposal.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance," someone once said somewhere. - Yours, etc.,
Dr ROBERTO SIBBEL, Rathkeale, Co Limerick.